


But If You Kissed Me Now

by mesdames



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Mistletoe, holiday cliche day!, huzzah!, mentions of as many december/winter holidays as i could think of!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:06:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesdames/pseuds/mesdames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q reserves the right to blame any lack of foresight or selective blindness on the fact that today is just not his day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But If You Kissed Me Now

**Author's Note:**

> so i decided to throw my hat into the mistletoe fic ring because i'm capital-T Tired of reading about people not already in a relationship making out publicly under a plant because that's just The Rules Of Christmas. this is me trying to be the change. also i kind of banged this out in one sitting and edited in another so it's unbeta'd, be kind, etc etc
> 
> title from Last Christmas by Wham! because i shalt hold in my heart no other chrismas songs before it.
> 
> also worth mentioning: i'm an american.

It’s been the kind of morning that makes Q feel the need to reevaluate the actual merits of existing. Not that his life is _so hard_ (not most days at least) that he breaks down in crisis at every little thing. But it’s probably best to let the record show that he had never liked snow and hadn't had to actually _deal_ with it before he moved from Brighton, where there were things like salt and snow ploughs, to Battersea, where there were fewer plows and 300% more pigeons.

It had started snowing early enough the day before that Q’s nightly walk to the Tube station had been through an inch of cold grey slush. It had stopped snowing around midnight which did not save his morning walk to the bus stop from 3 inches of cold _black_ slush or reconstituted slush bricks. During his morning walk was how he found out about the hole in his most utilitarian winter boots (bribed/stolen from Outfitting). At the 44 stop was when he realized that he'd left his wallet on the counter. _Of his flat_.

By the time Q actually got to work, he was cold and damp and felt more like a sentient washroom rug than an important SIS employee. That said, his projected first official act on the clock was to make tea and loiter in the staff kitchen for 15 minutes making up for the morning's lost time on his primary External Communications mobile. 

His plan was momentarily stalled, however, upon entering Q-branch proper and having his senses and sensibilities attacked by all manner of glittery ugliness. It probably wasn't good for his blood pressure, but he adjusted his projected schedule to include sorting through the camera feed of last night. The profusion of pointedly interfaith holiday decorations that had somehow been vomited from personal desk and wall space into _public_ desk and wall space displayed a blatant disregard for his painstakingly carved secular environment. This disregard would have to be dealt with in an authoritative, and timely (Hanukkah was over and the dancing menorah was probably offensive anyway), manner. Since “authoritative” and “timely” escaped him currently, he would settle for a passive aggressively worded mass email about Thoughtfulness and Consideration, which was close enough.

He made his way the staff kitchen and he got his tea and his loiter, but instead of checking External Comms he set to rights his holiday troubles. 

(He idly checked the camera feed on his Internal Happenings mobile but there was an undisguised edit that cut all of the hours he had been gone so he wrote it off and only barely refrained from sending that mass email, opting instead to email each of his atheistic underlings. After his spontaneous promotion during the Silva-Skyfall-Fucking-Hell (SSFH) Incident, striking fear into the hearts of his staff had been one of his first official acts as Q, so he got replies before his 15 minutes of loitering time were even up. Each reply basically said, ‘I don’t really care because gifts!’ so Q decided to leave well enough alone for the time being.)

However, being as it was an Existence Questioning Morning, Q spilled his scalding-fucking-hot, haven’t-even-taken-a-sip-yet-Jesus-Christ, second cup of tea all over himself. He had to write off most of his secondary Internal Happenings mobile and probably needed skin grafts on his inner thighs or something, but he fared better than he might have just a few months ago. Rather early in his tenure as Q, he realized that having changes of cloths on hand was a Very Good Idea and so had about a week’s worth of clothing in his office at any given time. This gave him the maximum time to soak his khakis in a lavatory sink or the stain would have set and he would have had to endure the potty training jokes of the peasantry (namely Moneypenny and, bleeding, _004_ , who were his lunch partners most Wednesdays and also utter twats). After cleaning up and drying off, he decided that it wasn't worth it to make more tea himself, he’d just suffer through the 20 or 30 minutes until his minions began wandering in with business and ask one of them to do it, because there was no way that he would last until his usual Wednesday mid-morning caffeine break (10:35AM GST).

It was during said break (10:37AM GST), after a quiet and productive couple of hours, that Q realized several more reasons to ask Why Me? had come up since his first trip to the kitchen. One such reason was that some interloper had switched out all of the nondescript communal mugs with festive, holiday ones, each of which was as obnoxiously colorful and cheery as the next. This Q could have abided quietly because A) he wasn't actually Scrooge or the Grinch or whoever ruined solstice before Jesus happened and B) finding Kinara and snowflake crockery that was as obnoxious as Santa kissing someone’s mother probably took some doing. But the culprit (or culprits) had also switched out all of the tea and coffee choices for anything and everything peppermint infused. This, as far as Q was concerned, was a step too far and frighteningly close to biological warfare. In all his years involved with Q-branch, no holiday had ever crept in and so cluttering up valuable work space with its decorations. He had graciously allowed it for the sake of morale, so far. If this was how he was to be treated for his generosity—with Mint Mocha _Black Tea_ —then heads would have to roll.

The strongly worded email was already drafting itself as he returned to his office from the made over kitchen.

But when he rounded the corner into the bullpen, two more reasons the ask How Is This My Life?? (both distinctly unhelpful and rather unfortunate) decorated his door. Sometime in the 10 minutes he was gone, his door frame had been vandalized with the gaudiest, most offensive gold and red tinsel known to man and, in the middle of it all, against his actual door, was 007.

Before Q even noticed him fully, 007 had turned to watch his approach, hands in pockets, looking for all the world like an enormous house cat with an expression of mild amusement, vague interest, and boredom.

As he drew to his office door, Bond stood fully and a conspicuous hush fell over the bullpen as too many people quieted at once to eavesdrop. Q couldn't even guess at the game but he was clearly a player and it was definitely on when he made eye contact with Bond and raised his eyebrows significantly.

Bond raised his eyebrows back like he wasn't hanging around Q’s door uninvited.

Q took a sip from his Technicolor dreidel mug and, after repressing a pained grimace at the taste, ripped down the tinsel that had no business on his door frame with as much malicious pleasure as possible. “Is there a something I can help you with, 007?”

Bond raised just one eyebrow even further and cocked his head in a movement that would have denoted confusion in anyone else but which, from him, had more of a “Are we really going to do this? _Now?_ ” feel.

“…Or if you just enjoy loitering, that’s fine too, I suppose,” Q continued, giving Bond his best “I’m done here” look.  He transferred the tinsel, which had a date with the bin, to the little finger of his mug hand and place his unoccupied hand against the palm scanner. His door slid silently open.

Bond snorted. “I should think you would know better than me why I’m here,” he said with a roll of his eyes that stuck on the upward swing longer than was necessary or polite.

“You might as well come in if we’re going to have a misunderstanding,” Q replied, moving into his office. But Bond stopped his step forward with a hand on his elbow and an unbearably smug look. Q shook off the hand irritably and narrowed his eyes at Bond. The only response he got was a pointed glance upward.

Immediately suspicious, Q looked up too.

And, of course, hanging from the door frame between himself and Bond was a generous sprig of mistletoe.

“Oh, for _fuck’s sake_.”

Whoever had planned it all had done a magnificent job of it, Q absolutely could not avoid conceding this point. It must have taken at least a month to figure out, or even _steal_ , the highly secret duty roster to plan for maximum exposure, and weeks more to cull out his personal schedule of caffeine and bathroom breaks, and to summon 007— _007_ —was truly inspired, a stroke of genius really. The wrapping and bow, the cherry on top, just an impeccable choice. Almost anyone else (with perhaps the exception of Moneypenny and a few of the more outgoing 00s) would have seen the mistletoe and laughed it off—everyone would have gotten their little giggle and Q could have gone about his life as normal, but Bond was a bit of a bastard. He would have done it for the public humiliation angle alone but, when combined with the right to forever tease Q about going to so much trouble just for a bit of a snog, there was no way he _wouldn't_ kiss Q.

And Q had to just _seethe_ for a minute, absorb how thoroughly he had been worked over. He was drawn from his unholy inner simmer only because Bond chuckled and, as if cued by Q’s thoughts, drawled, “You only had to ask, there was no need for all of _this_.”

A delighted titter went up and Q resignedly made eye contact again, trying to convey that this was in no was a ploy to contract whatever oral diseases he might be carrying (Q had read the files of all the agents he handled and supplied directly, Bond had no actual orally transmittable diseases). The arsehole just smirked—humour reaching all the way into his eyes and making them glitter with mischief—and ducked his head. The kiss was just a warm, dry press of Bond’s lips against the corner of Q’s mouth. It felt more like sharing a secret than the culmination of what was no doubt a month or more of planning and work. From the small eruption of catcalls and whistles Q realized, as Bond retreated, that this must have been a group effort.

The strongly worded email began to compose itself again and Q turned his droll expression for the prank well executed on Bond. “If that’s it then…?”

Bond’s smirk grew a strange shade of satisfied. “Yes, I think that will be all, thank you,” he said and Q finally entered his office. Bond casually slid his hands back into his pockets and began to stroll away. “Happy Holidays to you too, Q,” Bond called over his shoulder just before the door shut again. 

And if Q couldn't keep a little smile from his face as he sat down in his still slightly damp chair, then there was no one who could prove it.


End file.
